MacBook Pro? or Something els?

News & General Discussion
1

Hello Unity!

I am having trouble and crashes during development and my current machine not doing very well.
My requirement x64,
*Maya
*Maya LT
*3DS Max
*Zbrush
*MudBox
*Photoshop
*Unity
*Mono Develop
*Visual Studio (sometimes).
I wanted to work those all at the same time so I switch back n forth.
No delays, No overloading.

What about the MacBook Pro (Maximum available)? is it good enough ?
That is best available, Should I buy ?

"15-inch: 2.3GHz with Retina display
Specifications

2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz
16GB 1600MHz memory
512GB PCIe-based flash storage 1
Intel Iris Pro Graphics
NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
with 2GB GDDR5 memory
Built-in battery (8 hours)2

$2,599.00 "

There also another option available:

"HP ENVY 17t-j100 Leap Motion -Best Value

Operating system - Windows 8.1 64
Processor - 4th generation Intel(R) Core™ i7-4702MQ Processor
Screen size - 17.3-inch diagonal Full HD LED-backlit Display (1920 x 1080) Non touch
Memory - 8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Hard drive - 2TB 5400 rpm Dual Hard Drive
Graphics card - NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 750M Graphics with 4096MB of dedicated video memory
Optical drive - Blu-ray player SuperMulti DVD burner

$1,549.99"

Thank You,
Active

2

Seeing as Autodesk’s 3DS Max and Microsoft’s VisualStudio don’t run natively under Mac OSX and you’re looking to, for some reason, run these programs simultaneously; no, the MacBook Pro will not suit your needs.

3

I use unity for short tests on a macbook pro (although with intel graphics), but the fan tends to sound like a hoover and the performance is poor, but 16 gb ram and a SSD are a good point. Maybe mix those two? :wink:

4

I have a Macbook Pro with Windows 7 on it.
Works great, outstanding keyboard (Apple keyboards are IMO the best keyboards in the world) and has a lot of support from both Apple and any open communities.

However, the screen resolution annoyed me because I don’t see much of the code and I can’t see the models properly zoomed-out.
I can’t go any higher on it than 1280x800, maybe the ones with Retina displays solved this problem.

This and the fact I always take my work with me made me switch to a Surface Pro tablet.
Even though the screen is notably smaller, it works way better with a full-HD display.
If I’m on the go, I attach a type cover to it.
When I’m at the office or at home, I connect my Apple keyboard (did I say they’re awesome already?) through bluetooth and connect it to my 21.5" HDMI-enabled monitor.
I also have a bluetooth mouse with me, as Unity is the only Windows app I can’t control by touch screen nor stylus.
And Photoshop works really well with the included stylus, which means I can make sketches on my screen and save it there directly, so say goodbye to paper and scanners!

So if you would ask me, I would tell you to buy a Surface Pro or Surface Pro 2.
It’s as small, compact and portable as a tablet.
It’s as usable as a laptop.
It’s replaces your desktop, paper, pen(cil), Wacom-tablet and scanner altogether.
You can play many Windows games on it.
And it’s more affordable than the 2 laptops you mentioned.

You can install Windows on a Mac, ey?

5

I would definitely recommend a MacBook Pro. You can run OS X and Windows on it perfectly, which will suit all your development needs, despite being an awesome machine with fantastic build quality. If you can afford to get the top model with dedicated graphics, even better. :slight_smile:

Regarding the Surface Pro, I would personally advise against. It is not really a tablet and not really a laptop and thus more or less uncomfortable in either position, despite the lack of power and a extremely small screen.

6

I use mbp retina 13" and the resolution make unity UI look terribly bad( look blurry), wish they could correct this with an update. else unity run perfectly on it

7

There are no real touchpad drivers for windows. I’m using windows 7, too, but I need a unofficial russian driver, because the official drivers for the touchpad have a 1.5 second lag if you use tap to click. Very annoying, but this is the intended behavior, regarding to the official support forums. There are complaints for this issue for 8 years…

8

The screen is not a problem.
I can see stuff fine on mine and if not, I can still connect an external monitor to it and make stuff bigger.
The tablet is actually very powerful, even more than my Macbook Pro.
If you don’t have one, don’t advise it in any way (for or against).

It’s like saying “I don’t have a Wii U, but I would advise against it because the screen on the controller has a resolution of 256x192” (which is untrue, because it has 1920x1080).

9

I have the Macbook air(2013), can’t beat that battery life if you are programming on the go and the new intel GPU is plenty powerful enough.

10

I use macbook pro retina, latest model with the gt750m, all options maxxed out was like $3200. It’s more than enough I think for any work I do.

If you go to http://www.sagernotebook.com you can piece out a 15" laptop with an 850m, and comparable processor speed, 1 TB SSD, 16gb ram for about $2,000

So the macbook pro retina is pretty much $1200 more than a windows 8.1 machine with almost comparable specs. Still pretty different though.

The macbook pro comes with a PCI-E SSD which is 2 to 8 times faster than a SATA SSD you’d get in a PC laptop. So the macbook pro will actually feel alot faster in common tasks due to the faster SSD. So thats where some of that extra $1200 is going, way way faster disk access.

The macbook pro of course has the retina screen which is awesome, especially if you stare at a screen all day, the reduced eye strain is worth it. So some $1200 goes to that.

The macbook pro is also way way better build quality. It’s smaller and super thin in comparison, and is a solid piece of aluminum, so it’s very durable. Way longer battery life, it’s actually realistic idea to be able to go someone and get some work done without an AC adaptor. High-end components all throughout. Some of the $1200 goes to that.

Then theres also that OSX is way way better than windows, so I’m willing to put some money to that.

Then you get OSX, iLife, iWork, garageband and XCode for free. Whereas on windows you would need to be buy an office suite, visual studio, and windows updates. So some of the $1200 goes to the included software.

Also if you go on OSX, you can get apps like Pixelmator as a photoshop replacement, and Motion as an After Effects replacement, which are both way way cheaper than adobe offerings and would save some money.

So, gotta decide yourself, but keep in mind the premium price of Apple does come with alot more perks.

11

Visual studio is free, as are windows updates(not sure why you would think they were not) and office is usually included if you buy a laptop new. Windows 8 is the reason he should pay $1200 more for a Macbook.

12

MacBook Pro’s are fantastic machines, i have yet to find any competing laptop that best them. They are expensive, but they are also extremely well built and will just work as they should, i have yet to encounter any real issues from any MBP.

The biggest problem with MacBook are that you won’t normally run Windows on them, so you have to dual boot or commit to Windows, so this could be a problem for you since you have Windows only software listed.

Sure you can get a machine that is as good as any MBP (maybe outside the retina screen), but in terms of build quality and reliability, they are outstanding.

Personally i will only buy MacBook Pro’s as my main laptops since they are so extremely reliable, i have had nothing but trouble with every non-Apple laptop i have ever bought in my life and it’s just all those little things that i want to avoid in my life so that i can just work efficiently. Be it as an OSX or Windows machine, a MacBook Pro will give you an extremely good laptop.

13

The full professional visual studio is not free. And by windows updates I mean major version updates, which are not free. Office is not included in the $2000 laptop I pieced out.

14

I take your point about needing pro version of visual studio, I didn’t know that the express version was not compatible. You got ripped off not to get office included, I don’t know what you mean by major updates…windows 8.1 will be a free update. If you mean windows 9 that won’t be a worry for a few years yet.

15

Erm:

  1. Windows 8.1 is already out long ago, so ‘will be’ is placed incorrectly.
  2. MS Office comes free with some laptops that don’t include Access, Outlook and many more apps. It’s not free on all laptops, whereas iWork (which IMO sucks) can be installed for free through the Mac App Store.

MS Office is available on both systems. If you don’t like it, you can still go for Google Drive or LibreOffice + Thunderbird.

16

8.1 update 1. Sorry for any confusion…

17

Which got released a week ago.